IMHO, both The Shining and Dr Sleep were better movies than the books. I realize this will be a minority opinion.
I thought “The Descendants” was a better movie than the book.
YMMV, but “The Princess Bride”. I found William Goldman’s novel nasty, cynical and unpleasant to read, and I credit Rob Reiner with paring it down to the movie we love - the best parts of the good parts, as it were.
One?
The Hunt for Red October. The book is very good but the film is better, omitting a couple of subplots.
It’s too bad The Sum of All Fears was such an awful film, the book is beyond bloated. The movie changed too many things
I just re-read “Being There” a couple of weeks ago and I agree with you. The book, at barely over 100 pages, reads more like an outline or first draft than a complete story. And then there was Peter Sellers’ outstanding performance.
One that immediately comes to mind is “Moby Dick,” the movie made in the 50s starring Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab, directed by John Huston, with screenplay by Huston and Ray Bradbury. Anyone who had to slog through Melville’s novel in an American Lit class knows what I’m talking about. Huston and Bradbury cut out all the boring stuff and turned it into a remarkable adventure story.
I have to disagree with you there. The book was about Hollywood during the 40s while the movie was about Hollywood during the 60s. There were a lot of changes between the twp eras so the film had to pad things out. The problem was only about half of the added material worked. I’d like to see another adaptation of the book fully set during the Classic Hollywood Era when the Studio System was in full force.
Wow, really? Couldn’t disagree more.
[spoiler]In the book, humans - represented by Grant et al - survive against the raptors through knowledge and brains. They take advantage of knowing that the raptors eat eggs by poisoning the eggs and exposing them to the raptors who then die.
In the movie, there’s just a Tyrannus Ex Machina who comes out of nowhere to eat the raptors, save the humans and pose for the camera. There’s no way at all that humanity earns its right to survive in the movie.[/spoiler]
Despite having Kevin Costner in it, the movie “Field of Dreams” was much better than W.P. Kinsella’s novel “Shoeless Joe”.
…I see what you did there…
I’ll add Carrie to the list of SK based movies that are better than the book.
With the exception of the less than satisfactory ending, Little Fires Everywhere was more entertaining to watch than to read.
I agree with most of the above, and will add:
Goldfinger – this one’s practically obligatory in these threads. The movie observed the logical shortciomings in the book (Goldfinger really DID want to steal the gold from Fort Knox) and fixed it.
Ice Station Zebra – The movie’s completely different from Maclean’s novel, and better for it.
Puddin’head Wilson I actually much prefer the Ken Howard TV movie of this more than Twain’s novel. A first.
The Natural – I haven’t read Bernard Malamud’s novel, but from all accounts the movie’s much more satisfying.
The Day the Earth Stood Still – definitely superior to Harry Bates’ story Farewell to the Master
Hey, that book taught me everything I know about ambergris. There are absolutely no ambergris facts provided in that fancy adventure screenplay of yours.
I like them both, the books as books and the movies as movies.
I had things to grumble about in both – that interminable slog through Emyn Muil in the former, Gimli as comic relief in the latter – but on the whole I enjoy both as a good example of their particular art.
Having said that, practically every really memorable line in the films was penned by Tolkien, though not necessarily by the character or at the time in the book.* I pictured Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens sitting around a table with ‘the good stuff’ on 3x5 cards saying, “So, okay, where will we use this?”
*Example: The opening lines, “The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.” were uttered not by Galadriel but Treebeard as he was saying farewell to the hobbits just before they returned to the Shire.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven is mostly forgotten, but the movie is a classic.
This is a lot more common than most people realize. Lots and lots of movies are based on books. In many cases, people have never even heard of the book, and so don’t realize that that was the source of the movie. Where they have heard of the book, it’s usually because the book was very good, and comparing a movie to a very good book, of course the book will usually be better, because it’s very good. But when a good movie is made from a mediocre book, usually folks won’t have heard of the book, and so not realize that it’s better than the book.
I think that it was Hitchcock who said that he always chose mediocre books to turn into movies, because what makes for a good movie isn’t what makes for a good book.
Shutter Island, where the part that makes the movie great isn’t in the book.
[spoiler]In the final scene, Leonard DiCaprio apparently has returned to a fantasy world, and therefore he is about to be lobotomized. As the people who are going to take him away for the procedure approach, he asks, apropos of nothing, “Is it better to live as a monster or die as a good man?” Then he walks silently to those people as the movie ends.
The implication is that he HAS gotten better, but he can’t live with the guilt of what he’s done, so he fakes a relapse so he can get lobotomized. The film moves from being a genre pic to a meditation on guilt and responsibility, and IMO this scene is the whole crux of the movie. But none of this happens in the book at all, and Dennis Lehane, the book’s author, doesn’t like that interpretation (after all, it’s not the one he wrote), and he has basically said he doesn’t believe that’s what the final words mean. DiCaprio and Martin Scorcese, the director of the film, have never commented publicly on this issue, probably out of deference to Lehane, but the film’s psychiatric advisor has been quoted as saying that is the correct interpretation of what happens in the final scene.
[/spoiler]
The Princess Bride - There was a funny scene in the beginning where the 6 fingered man showed up at the farm to meet a young Buttercup that was axed for the movie for obvious reasons, but on the whole the dialogue in the film is sharper and Miracle Max is almost entirely Billy Crystal’s improvization.
The World According to Garp is my choice.
In the movie, you have to imagine Garp’s book from the montage with the gloves and the falling piano, and Garp’s description. “…when he takes the gloves off, he finally touches his family, but he dies.”* “If that’s what it’s about, I like it!”
In the book, Irving actually includes an excerpt. All it shows is that Irving isn’t as good a writer as Garp. For things like that, it’s best to leave magical writing to the reader’s imagination.
PLus, I love the cyclical nature of the film, the constant repetition of themes as if the movie were the score of a play. None of that is in the book.
But the book does have a large section on how every character died. Kind of a bummer ending, dude. More to the point, you could do that with every novel ever written. It doesn’t really add anything, or tell you anything insightful. It’s not all that clever.
*from memory
These are both examples where the books and movies can’t directly be compared. The books provide a much richer and more complex experience. The movies cut out much of what makes the books great, but provide a more entertaining experience by hyping the action at the expense of depth. Each is great in its own way, but one isn’t “better” than the other, unless you define “better” as being either more complex or more exciting.
It’s been 40 years since I read the book. I loved the book and really looked forward to the movie. I loved the movie as well. I’m not sure I could say one was better than the other to me.